The Cubs and Angels have to worry about their LDS assignments, while the Brewers have to worry about even getting there.

Carlos Zambrano (0 DXL)
If you buy what Bob Brenly said during Friday's game, that Zambrano was losing velocity without having anything physically wrong, then there's still the question of what Zambrano gave up in pursuit of a no-hitter. If you don't buy into Brenly's logic and you worry, like me, that Zambrano's return was just the start of a downward slope that might have been accelerated by 110 pitches at high adrenaline, then you end up at the same place. Zambrano has one start, maybe, before the playoffs, and in that start the Cubs will have to make a lot of decisions. With the division clinched and Zambrano's scheduled Thursday start putting him in position to lead off the Cubs' Division Series, they almost have to see him go the normal distance, hopefully with the same higher elbow at ball release like he had during the no-hitter, before they can write his name into their playoff rotation in ink. If he has another poor performance and looks bad physically, the Cubs do have options, but not nearly as good.

A few surprise performers from rotations around the game, and what you might expect from them in 2009.

This week we will take a look at a few surprise starting pitchers on the Support Neutral Lineup-adjusted Value Added above Replacement (SNLVAR) leaderboards to see what we can expect from these players next year. Since SNLVAR adjusts for the difficulty of competition and measures production, it's a wonderful tool for valuing a pitcher's production, but by itself it is not predictive of future performance. For that, we have other tools, such as QuikERA (QERA) that are more accurate for measuring performance than actual ERA; when you combine the two together, analyzing pitchers becomes that much easier.

The major question for each AL team coming into camp, and the news from around the leagues.

Just 11 more days remain until one of the best days of the year for baseball fans. No, we're not talking about Valentine's Day. That's for greeting card companies and candy makers. This year February 14 is the day that pitchers and catchers begin working out in many spring training camps throughout Arizona and Florida. Among those who will celebrate Valentine's Day with a little PFP--pitchers fielding practice, for the uninitiated--rather than TLC will be the Orioles, Cubs, Astros, Royals, A's, Phillies, Giants, and Mariners.

The ten worst defenses in the minors, and the pitchers that learned to hate going to the office because of them.

While going about the business of minor league player evaluation, I think we can sometimes forget that baseball is a team game. Often in the minor leagues, it seems a game between eight players that will never make it, and the one blue-chip player you came out to the ballpark to see. Scouts are able to watch a game with blinders that allow them to focus on one player's individual skills, independent of the other players around him. This is what separates amateur-talent scouts from the average baseball fan, but in statistics, we try to do this by accounting for context. What league was the player in, relative to his age? Was he consistently dominating? What type of environment was the player hitting or pitching in?